With popularization of intelligent terminals, a variety of mobile data services emerge, which support a user equipment (UE) in accessing the Internet through mobile networks of different standards, for example, QQ, Facebook, Sina Weibo, webpage browsing, and email processing.
Because mobile data network traffic increases dramatically, a mobile network originally adapted to a conventional terminal cannot bear the heavy load, leading to obvious reduction in network quality. Moreover, conventional Internet service servers, such as IT devices including a QQ server, a Facebook server, a google server set for Android, and a DNS server also cannot bear the heavy load, and because robustness of this kind of IT device is much lower than that of a telecommunications network device, faults, such as system congestion and breakdown, may often occur. When a fault occurs in these devices, a user equipment (such as an intelligent terminal) accessing through a mobile network may make continual attempts to detect as soon as possible when a service recovers, for example, continually perform DNS query attempts and TCP connection attempts. A time interval between the attempt behavior is generally up to tens of seconds or even longer, which is far longer than detection duration (generally 6 to 8 seconds) for inactivity of an air interface of the mobile network. According to an operating mechanism of the mobile network, when a network discovers that no data is transmitted in continuous time of the detection duration for the inactivity of the air interface of the mobile network, the network may be triggered to release an air interface connection, and the user equipment is switched from a connected state (such as an ECM_CONNECTED state) to an idle state (such as an ECM_IDLE state). Therefore, the TCP/DNS re-attempt behavior may lead to continual establishment and release of the air interface connection between the UE and the mobile network. However, each time the connection is established, it is required that the UE and the mobile network perform a related connection establishment process, which thereby produces frequent and a large amount of connection establishment signaling (such as a Service Request) and connection release signaling that is caused by the inactivity of the air interface for quite a long time. Therefore, once the Internet service server fails, before the fault is rectified, the behavior of the user equipment brings a severe signaling impact on the mobile network.
In addition, after the UE keeps failing to perform service attempts for a period of time, the UE usually initiates deactivation processing on a bearer, and immediately activates the bearer again, so as to detect whether the service is unavailable because of a mobile network problem. A time interval between the deactivation/activation process is relatively large. However, because the number of user equipments using a same Internet service is usually large, when an Internet service server is faulty or a public server (such as a DNS server) is faulty, it may lead to that a large number of affected user equipments simultaneously perform bearer deactivation/activation processing in a short time, and may also bring a severe signal impact on the mobile network.
Therefore, a network air interface connection control method is introduced in the prior art. The method introduces a state called “CELL_PCH”. This state may be regarded as a sub state of a connected state, which saves power compared with a normal connected state, and saves air interface resources. However, different from an idle state, an air interface connection can be maintained in the sub state. After the control mechanism is introduced, when a wireless network detects that no data is transmitted by a UE (for example, for 6 to 8 seconds), a state of the UE is switched to the CELL_PCH state, instead of the idle state. In this case, the air interface connection and a network-side connection are not released. When the UE in the CELL_PCH state does not transmit any data within a period of time, the UE is switched to the idle state, and the air interface connection is released. If the UE transmits data within the period of time, the network again switches the UE to a primary state of the connected state, to complete the data transmission.
In the prior art, after the service server or the DNS server is faulty, the UE actively initiates fault detection, which inevitably leads to execution of frequent air interface connections and release, or frequent bearer deactivation and activation, thereby bringing a great signaling impact on the mobile network.